News and Notes for Friday, October 18th, 2024
What a night, Cleveland fans.
I can’t stop watching replays of the Jhonkensy Noel and David Fry homers that gave Cleveland a 7-5 walkoff win over the New York Yankees Thursday night. Especially Noel’s blast after which he looked down as if he had done something bad... something bad to the ball and to the Yankees.
Zack Meisel is still the gold standard for Guardians’ reporting and his account of last night’s miracle doesn’t disappoint. The best insight was probably that Matthew Boyd turned on a Guardians game on June 26th to help him decide if he wanted to come here and saw a Jhonkensy Noel home run and a wild dugout celebration and decided he wanted to be a part of that. Wow.
Mandy Bell had a great recap also, focusing on Noel’s dad being there. Terry Pluto had an article full of celebration and joy.
Jason Lloyd looks ahead a little bit more in his piece, which is fair. The Guardians will, indeed, need more from their stars if they want to take the series. The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner also wrote a fun article on the Guardians win, and Chad Jennings looked at Noel’s homer through the lens of a fun call on the Spanish broadcast.
David Laurila covered the game for FanGraphs. I just can’t read enough of these recaps.
If I had a nickel for every time a guardians right handed hitting, swing at everything, rookie with a fun nickname hit the key home run in a playoff game I’d have two nickels
— Matt Dallas (@MattDallas27) October 18, 2024
Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
HOLY WHEEEEE MOLY! pic.twitter.com/05p3QStO62
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 18, 2024
We’ve got another game tonight with Jason Kipnis throwing out the first pitch, Gavin Williams trying to give the Guardians a little length after they, again, asked a lot from their bullpen, and a team you can’t help but love trying to put the true fear of God in the Yankees. See you at 8:08PM EST.
Here's an adorable interview with Kyle Manzardo:
"That was a roller coaster to say the least, but happy we came out on top."@LGRed chatted with Kyle Manzardo after the @CleGuardians' comeback victory in Game 3 of the ALCS. pic.twitter.com/5pX4Xbu5c2
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) October 18, 2024
I wanted to apologize to Brian Hemminger as I accidentally failed to include his thoughts in our ALCS predictions. I am including them now so you can see how prescient he was:
I’m most excited to see Cleveland four wins away from the World Series for the first time since the last WS run in 2016. This team is special and I wasn’t ready for the season to be over. I don’t want this season to end!
I’m most nervous about dealing with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. They tore us a new one by themselves in a series earlier this year. We are going to have to be better against them this time around with the season on the line.
My prediction is Kyle Manzardo plays hero more than once this upcoming series and sees a significant uptick in playing time.
Finally, the Dodgers destroyed the Mets 10-2 to take a 3-1 lead in the NLCS.
